^ On
a 31 August:2003 William
J. Faenza Jr., 35, of West Penn Township PA, swerves around traffic on westbound
Route 443 in Mahoning Township, Carbon County, forcing other cars from the
road, before finally pulling into a gas station, where he is arrested for
driving drunk at 182mph (293km/h) in a 55mph (89km/h) zone. Faenza, the
former chief executive of K-Bar Powder Coating Inc. in Quakertown, says
that he "maybe got up to 100mph" (161km/h) as he passed a slow-moving car,
and pulled over at a gas station when he saw a police car behind him. "He
never would have caught me [otherwise]"2002 Within
24 hours, 86 cm of rain falls in Kangnung, South Korea, as typhoon Rusa,
the worst in 40 years, rages on in South and North Korea, causing mudslides
that kill hundreds and devastates crops.. 2001 World
Conference Against Racism begins in South Africa. Individual coutries are
opposed to consideration of the treatment of:  Palestinians: (US,
Canada, Israel), Dalits [=Untouchables] (India), slaves and reparations
due their descendants (US), Tibetans (China). etc, etc.2000
Corruption trial of former dictator Suharto, 79, starts in Djakarta, Indonesia,
but, after one hour, it is postponed for two weeks, as the accused fails
to appear because, his lawyers claim, he is too ill to stand trial.. The
court wants him examined by independent physicians. In any case, president
Wahid had said that he will pardon Suharto, if he is tried and convicted.2000 US President William Jefferson Clinton [19 Aug 1946~]
vetoes a bill that would have gradually repealed inheritance taxes, saying
it would have benefited the wealthiest people in the US while threatening
the nation's financial well-being.

1999 Chechnya war: First in a series of bomb explosions
in Moscow kills a woman in a shopping mall
Shamil Basayev categorically denies receiving money from Osama Bin
Laden,
Russian Defense Ministry reports concentration of gunmen in Chechnya
on the border with Dagestan, near the Novolakskoye region http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe/aug.html

1997 Research shows that Internet contributes to stress
and depression. Newspapers report that a study by Carnegie
Mellon University had found that extended Internet use tended to make
people feel more depressed, stressed, and lonely. The study raised
concerns that, rather than facilitating communication, e-mail and
the World Wide Web were fostering a sense of isolation among computer
users.

1994 Software qualifies for patents Newspapers report that a federal
appeals court had made it easier to patent software inventions. For
many years, the US Patent and Trademark Office had argued that certain
types of software counted as printed matter and did not qualify for
patents. However, the appeals court ruled that software cannot be
read without a computer and did not qualify as print. Digital
Equipment was permitted to apply for a patent to store data in
computer memory.

1993 Tras más de 50 años de ocupación, los últimos soldados
rusos abandonan Lituania. 1991 Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
declare their independence, raising to 10 the number of republics seeking
to secede from the Soviet Union.  Los parlamentarios de Uzbekistán
y los de Kirguizistán proclaman la independencia de estas repúblicas de
la URSS. , raising to 10 the number of republics seeking to secede from
the Soviet Union.1991 In Washington DC, hundreds
of thousands of union members march in a "Solidarity Day" protest.

1972 Vietnam:
US weekly casualty figures hit new low US weekly casualty
figures of five dead and three wounded are the lowest recorded since
record keeping began in January 1965. These numbers reflected the
fact that there were less than 40'000 US troops left in South Vietnam
by this time and very few of these were involved in actual combat.
US troop withdrawals had begun in the fall of 1969 following President
Richard Nixon's announcement at the Midway conference on 08 June 1972,
that he would begin reducing the number of US troops in Vietnam as
the war was turned over to the South Vietnamese as part of his "Vietnamization"
policy. Once the troop withdrawals began, they continued on a fairly
regular basis, steadily reducing the troop level from the 1969 high
of 543'400. 

1971 Dave Scott becomes 1st person to drive a car on the
Moon

1970 Vietnam:
Thieu government maintains control of Senate In South
Vietnam, antigovernment Buddhist candidates appear to win 10 of 30
Senate seats contested in the previous day's election. However, the
Senate as a whole remained in the firm control of conservative, pro-government
supporters. Catholics still held 50 percent of the Senate seats, even
though they constituted only 10% of the population of South Vietnam.

1967 Vietnam:
Dulles supports Diem's decision not to hold national
election Secretary of State John Foster Dulles [26 Jan1953 – 22 Apr
1959].supports the position of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh
Diem [03 Jan 1901 – 02 Nov 1963] position regarding his refusal to
hold "national and general elections" to reunify the two Vietnam states.
Although these elections were called for by the Geneva Accords of
July 1954, Diem and his supporters in the United States realized that
if the elections were held, Ho Chi Minh [19 May 1890 – 02 Sep 1969]
and the more populous north would probably win, thereby reuniting
Vietnam under the Communist banner. Accordingly, he refused to hold
the elections and the separation of North and South soon became permanent.

1965 Vietnam:
Ky refuses to negotiate with the Communists.
Premier Nguyen Cao Ky [08 Sep 1930~] announces that South Vietnam
would not negotiate with the Communists without guarantees that North
Vietnamese troops would be withdrawn from the South. He also said
that his government would institute major reforms to correct economic
and social injustices. Also on this day: In the United States, President
Lyndon Baines Johnson [27 Aug 1908 – 22 Jan 1973] signs into law a
bill making it illegal to destroy or mutilate a US draft card, with
penalties of up to five years and a $10'000 fine. 1967 Senate Committee
calls for stepped-up bombing Senate Preparedness Investigating Committee
issues a call to step up bombing against the North, declaring that
US Secretary of Defense Robert
Strange McNamara [09 Jun 1916~] had "shackled" the air war against
Hanoi, and calling for "closure, neutralization, or isolation of Haiphong."
President Johnson, attempting to placate Congressional "hawks" and
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expanded the approved list of targets in
the north, authorizing strikes against bridges, barracks, and railyards
in the Hanoi-Haipong area and additional targets in the previously
restricted areas along the Chinese border.

^1951 Justice Douglas: US should recognize Communist
China. Following
a hiking and mountain climbing trip through Asia, Supreme Court Justice
William Orville Douglas [16 Oct 1898 – 19 Jan 1980] issues a
statement calling for the recognition of the communist People's Republic
of China. His comments touched off an angry partisan debate in the
US Senate. Douglas spent much of the summer of 1951 hiking and mountain
climbing around the borders of Russia and China. Upon his return,
Douglas urged that the United States recognize communist China. The
US had not established diplomatic relations with the communist People's
Republic of China since the establishment of that nation in 1949,
following the successful revolution of Mao Zedong [26 Dec 1893 –
09 Sep 1976]. And by 1951, US troops were battling Chinese military
forces in the Korean War. Nevertheless, Douglas suggested that US
diplomatic recognition of China would be a "real political victory"
for the West. Recognition by
the US, he reasoned, would help split China from its dependence on
the Soviet Union and perhaps stem the tide of communist expansion
in the Far East. "Recognition," Douglas stated, "will require straightforward
and courageous thinking by all Americans, but it is the only logical
course." In the US Senate, Herman Welker [11 Dec 1906 – 30 Oct
1957] (R-Idaho) set off a furious exchange when he proposed that Douglas's
comments be printed in the Congressional Record. He suggested that
the justice was a "high Administration spokesman" and that his statement
indicated that the Democrat administration of President Harry S. Truman
[08 May 1884 – 26 Dec 1972] was considering recognition of China.
Tom Connally [27 Feb 1917 – 15 Jun 1993] (D-Texas) rose to attack
Welker's action as pure politics and a "purely personal attack" on
President Truman. Connally then chided Douglas for his "fool statements."
Douglas, he suggested, was not the secretary of state or president
and should "stay home instead of roaming all around the world and
Asia." Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen [04 Jan. 1896 – 07 Sep
1969] (R-Illinois) commented that Douglas's comments could not be
"divorced from the party in power."
The controversy set off by Douglas's comments showed that despite
talk about a "bipartisan" Cold War foreign policy, party loyalties
were a very important component of post-World War II debates on the
US's diplomacy. In 1951, Republicans were still blaming Democrat Harry
S. Truman for having "lost" China to the communists in 1949. The Democrats
had their turn, however, during the presidential campaign of 1960,
when John F. Kennedy [29 May 1917 – 22 Nov 1963] criticized
the Republican administration of President Dwight David Eisenhower
[14 Oct 1890 – 28 Mar 1969] for "losing" Cuba. —(070830)

1949 Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil
War attend the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held
in Indianapolis, Indiana.

^1946 Last day of Moore School computer lectures The seminal Moore
School lectures at the University of Pennsylvania end. At the
time, most of the country's leading computer scientists worked at
the Moore School, including John
Mauchly [30 Aug 1907 – 08 Jan 1980] and John
Adam Presper Eckert [09 April 1919 – 03 Jun 1995], who led
the development of ENIAC,
the first widely publicized electronic computer. Newspapers, newsreels,
and scientific publications covered the computer after its inauguration
in February 1946. The Moore School responded to the growing demand
of the scientific community to learn more about electronic computers
by inviting 40 participants from major research organizations to a
summer course beginning on 08 July 1946. The lectures, which continued
for eight weeks, were instrumental in spreading the understanding
of electronic computing to major universities in the US and England.

1944 The British Eighth Army penetrates the
German Gothic Line, a defensive line across northern
Italy. The Allies had pushed the German occupying troops on the Italian
peninsula farther and farther north. On 04 June 1944, US Gen. Mark
Clark had captured Rome. Now the Germans had dug in north of Florence.
Built earlier in the year, this defensive line consisted of fortified
towns, stretching from Pisa in the west to Pesaro in the east. One
of these towns was Siena, home to much glorious medieval art 
also home to the Italian partisans, guerillas who had been harassing
the Germans and remnants of Italian fascists since Italy had surrendered.
Their ability to create chaos and confusion behind the Germans' own
lines was of great aid to the Allies. Expert strategic maneuvering
by British General Harold Alexander, who opened his offensive on August
25, surprised the Germans, and the 8th Army swept through the Plain
of Lombardy, crashing through the Gothic Line.

1944 Soviet troops and tanks capture Bucharest and receive
a huge welcome from the people, who would soon find out that Soviet oppression
was not much better than Nazi oppression.  II Guerra Mundial: Las
tropas rusas entran en Bucarest. . 1942 The British
army under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeats Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's
Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.

^1939 Nazis stage pretext to attack Poland At noon, despite threats of
British and French intervention, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signs an
order to attack Poland, and German forces move to the border. That
evening, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms stage a phony invasion
of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side
of the border. They also leave behind a handful of dead German prisoners
in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of "Polish aggression."
At dawn the next morning, fifty-eight
German army divisions invade Poland all across the 2800-km border.
Hitler expected appeasement from Britain and France  the same
nations that had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938
with their signing of the Munich Pact. However, neither country would
allow Hitler's new desecration of Europe's borders to stand, and Germany
was presented with an ultimatum: withdraw by September 3 or face war
with the Western democracies. At
11:15 on September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the British
ultimatum, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared on national
radio to solemnly announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Australian,
New Zealand, and India immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon,
the French ultimatum expired, and at 17:00 France declared war against
Germany. World War II had begun.

1939 Protecting stock market investors The Public Examining Board,
which had been formed to "study customer protection" in the stock
market, releases fourteen recommendations ranging from fuller disclosure
of brokerage firms' financials to increasing the minimum capital requirements
for commodity accounts. Earlier
in the decade, the government responded to the swirl of corruption
and impropriety surrounding Wall Street by handing down a Securities
Act in 1934, as well as a related measure in 1935. Along with imposing
tighter controls, these bills also paved the way for the formation
of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was in full
swing by 1939, monitoring the markets and meting out punishments.

^ 1899 Stanley Steamer reaches top of Mount Washington A Stanley Steamer, driven by
F.O. Stanley, becomes the first car to reach the summit of Mount Washington,
New Hampshire. F.O. Stanley was one of the Stanley twins, founders
of the Stanley Motor Company, which specialized in steam-driven automobiles.
The steamers not only climbed mountains, but often beat larger, gasoline-powered
cars in races. In 1906, a Stanley Steamer would break the world record
for the fastest mile when it reached 127 miles per hour (204 km/h).

1813 Battle of Dresden: Napoléon with a force of
130'000 defeats an allied force of 200'000 Austrians, Russians and Prussians.1813 Se produce la batalla de San Marcial, conflicto dentro
de la Guerra de Independencia española, que supuso una victoria estratégica
del mando aliado, pues acabó con la ocupación francesa del País Vasco y
puso fin a las operaciones militares en la zona.1802
Captain Merriwether Lewis leaves Pittsburgh to meet up with Captain William
Clark and begin their trek to the Pacific Ocean. 1778
British kill 17 Stockbridge indians in the Bronx during Revolution 1756 The British at Fort William Henry, New York, surrender
to Louis Montcalm of France.1535 Pope Paul II deposes
and excommunicates English King Henry VIIII, who had changed much since
he had been declared by an earlier pope "Most Christian King" and "Defender
of the Faith." 1534 Jan of Leyden declares himself
King David as he leads a peasant revolt. 1521 Cortes
captures the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and sets it on fire.1303
The War of Vespers in Sicily ends with an agreement between Charles of Valois,
who invaded the country, and Frederick, the ruler of Sicily.

^1264 The "Seraphic Doctor" preaches
before the Pope. Next
to founder St. Francis of Assissi [1182 – 03 Oct 1226], St.
Bonaventure [1217 – 15 Jul 1274] is the most eminent of the
Franciscan friars. He was not only Governor General of his order,
but the man who gave them their definitive doctrine and only the sixth
person to be named a primary doctor of the church. At that time he
was given the name "Doctor Seraphicus." His theology teaches that
God cannot be known rationally but must be apprehended mystically.
To be pure of heart is a truer way to God than to have a razor-sharp
mind. Love, he said (following St. Paul), supersedes knowledge.
Bonaventure's teaching was strongly
Christ-centered, even his biography of St. Francis, who taught men
"to conform their lives to the life of Christ." Bonaventure was no
arid scholar as three examples will show. To learn the needs of the
Franciscan order he went out and visited his friars, winning such
love from them that there was much weeping at his death. Then, too,
his theology is not dry but mystical. He did not load his work down
with tedious digressions into subtle points but made every effort
to teach plainly. And the biography of St. Francis is an example of
good investigative reporting, for he interviewed many brothers still
living who had known the great saint.
He was zealous for souls and preached much. An extensive collection
of his sermons remains in existence. Bonaventure taught that man needs
grace in order to stand straight. Only through Jesus Christ can he
be put right with God. Christ as the word incarnate was an important
theme in his preaching. The grace of the sacraments heals the soul
of accumulated effects of sin, both deliberate and inherited.
One sermon he preached was on this
day 31 August 1264, before Pope Urban IV [1200 – 02 Oct 1264]
and his council. This was on the "Blessed Sacrament." We are made
complete by partaking of the Eucharist with appropriate contemplation.
By contemplation he means a generous, prayerful and even mystical
mindset that results in losing oneself in the adoration of God. As
his apology for varieties of religious orders, Bonaventure notes that
no one order can capture the fullness of Christ although each tries
to capture something of his perfection. Hence there are many ways
of serving Christ and approaching his perfection. Vows are merely
aids to living a life which imitates Christ.
Because of the warmth of his religious feeling, Bonaventure is highly
regarded as a theologian. He managed to avoid the pitfalls of pagan
philosophy. It is owing to him that Franciscan thought is largely
Augustinian in orientation.

1217 Berenguela, reina de Castilla, cede el trono a su
hijo Fernando III.1216Honorius
III is crowned in Rome. A gentle and beloved pope, he is also remembered
for the useful biographies he wrote.

2005
Joseph Rotblat, Polish-born British physicist, 1995 Peace Nobel
laureate, born (full
coverage) on 04 November 1908. —(050902)2005
(25 Rajab 1426) Some 1000 Iraqi Shi'ites, among crowd on the 100-meter-long
Al-Ayma Bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad, stampeded at 12:00 (08:00
UT) by false rumor of an impending suicide bombing. They died trampled,
or drowned in the river into which they jumped or fell. The crowd was heading
to the Kadhimiya mosque (or Kazimiye, al-Kazimiyyah) 1.5 km away, on this,
the wafat (martyrdom anniversary) of the 7th imam, Musa Al-Kadhim [Sunday?
07 Safar 128 or 129? – Friday? 25 Rajab 183 AH, or? Thursday 28 Oct
745 or Friday 28 Oct 746? – Sunday 01 Sep 799 AD] (aka Mousa al-Kadhim,
Musi-e-Kazim, Musa Kazim, Musa ibne Ja’far) who was imprisoned and
poisoned on orders from caliph Harun ar-Rashid [February 766 or March 763
– 24 Mar 809,. Some 600 are injured.2005 Some 15 Iraqi
Shi'ites, at 10:00 (06:00 UT), by at least 3 mortar rounds fired
at the crowd at the shrine of Musa al-Kadhim in Baghdad. 30 are injured.2004 Ten persons, including Roza Nagayeva, woman suicide
bomber of the Islambouli Brigades, in support of Muslims of Chechnya, at
20:10 in a parking lot next to the Rizhskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia.
Three of the dead survived long enough to be brought to a hospital. Another
51 are injured. Roza Nagayeva's sister Amnat Nagayeva was one the two suicide
bombers in the double plane crashes of August 2004. The Islambouli Brigades
are named after Lt. Khaled el-Islambouli [1958 – 15 Apr 1982], leader
of the group of soldiers who assassinated Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat
[25 Dec 1918 – 06 Oct 1981].2004 Maria Sokolov, 58; Tatiana
Koritchenko, 49; Rosita Lehman, 43; Emanuel Yosef, 28; Tekala Tiroyainet,
33; Denise Hadad, 40; Avial Atash, 4; Karin Malcha, 23; Shoshana Amos, 64;
Vitaly Brodsky, 52, and his wife Nargiza Oststovsky, 54; Larisa Gomanenko,
48; Roman Sokolovsky, 51; Eliyahu Ozen, 58; Rosa Forer; all from
Be'er Sheva; Tamara Dibrashvilli, 70, from Or Yehuda;
and suicide bombers of the Iz a Din al-Kassam Brigades of Hamas
Ahmed Kawasme, 26, and Nissim Jabri, 20, at 14:50 and 14:51 (11:51
UT) in Be'er Sheva, Israel, on two buses which had departed from the central
bus station; the buses are one 100 m behind the other, one on Rager Boulevard
near Soroka Medical Center, the other on a street close to the municipal
building. More than 100 persons are injured. These are the first suicide
bombings inside Israel since 14 March 2004, when 13 persons, including 2
suicide bombers, were killed in Ashdod.2003
Robert Pinetti, 43, of a drug overdose, at about 09:00, in his
home at 2525 Dobbins Road in Lawrence Park, Erie, Pennsylvania. At 05:00
he had refused treatment from paramedics called by a family member. He was
as a friend and co-worker (at Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria in Millcreek Township)
of Brian Wells, who, on 28 August 2003
shortly after been arrested after robbing a bank, was killed by a bomb attached
to him by a neck collar.2002 Rafat Daraghmeh, two 15-year-old
boys, a boy, 9, and a girl, 10, Palestinians, in Toubus, West Bank,
by missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter at the car where the three
men were. The children were in a nearby house. Seven other bystanders are
injured. Daraghmeh was an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militant. 2002
Some 50 of some 80 aboard an overloaded boat that capsizes in the
monsoon-swollen Baitariani River in the Jajpur district of eastern Orissa,
India, while crossing from Solampur to Devighat, hitting a midstream submerged
sand bank and being sucked into a whirlpool. About 12 children are among
those drowned.2001 Rich Hernandez, 37, Santi Arovitx, 28,
and Kip Krigbaum, 45, respectively pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief
of a Columbia Helicopters Vertol 107 (13-meter fuselage, a rotor at each
end), one of the largest of 15 helicopters assigned to the largest (100
sq. km) current wildfire in Montana, which crashes in a brushy ravine north
of Yellowstone National Park, during a maintenance flight to check the helicopter.
The fire was started on 14 August by lightning, so there is nobody to charge
with murder, unlike in the case of the collision of two firefighting aircrafts
in Northern California that killed two pilots on 27 August 2001.2001
Hagop "Jake" Kuredjian, 40, and James Beck, 35, who fires 150 rounds
at federal officers and sheriff's officials (including Los Angeles County
sheriff's deputy Kuredjian) trying to serve a search warrant at his home
in Santa Clarita, California, because a neighbor reported that Beck was
stockpiling weapons and falsely claiming to be a US Marshal. Beck's charred
remains are found the next day in his home destroyed by a fire after the
gunfight. Beck was a police officer from June 1987 to August 1988 but was
fired for failure to satisfactorily complete his probation period. Then
he had numerous convictions for burglary, receiving stolen property and
impersonating a police officer.

2000 John Kaiser, 67, a native
of Minnesota, Catholic missionary priest among the Masai of Kenya
for the past 36 years and human rights activist. His body, shot in
the back of the head, is found early today along a highway near Naivasha,
80 km northwest of Nairobi. Documents found on the priest's body link
two Kenyan Cabinet ministers to violent tribal clashes. Kaiser intended
to hand the documents over to a government commission looking into
the clashes, which took place in the Rift Valley Province between
1992 and 1997. "Father Kaiser always loved the truth," would say later
Bishop Joseph Mairura, who studied under Kaiser in seminary. "Because
he witnessed the truth, and some powerful people feared the truth,
he was killed. Instead of repenting, they killed him."

^1997 Princess Diana of Wales,
36, her suitor, Dodi al Fayed, 41, and her drunk driver,
Henri Paul, in an automobile accident while speeding
away from paparazzi. She was the divorced wife of Prince Charles of Wales.
Severely injured is al-Fayed's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones [1968~], the
lone survivor of the accident On 29
July 1981, nearly four billion people in seventy-four countries had watched
on TV the marriage of Prince
Charles [14 Nov 1948~], heir to the British throne, to Lady Diana, a
young English schoolteacher. Married in a grand ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral
in the presence of 2650 guests, the couple's romance was for the moment
the envy of the world. However, before
long the couple grew apart. On 28 August 1996, two months after Queen Elizabeth
II urged the couple to divorce, the prince and princess reached a final
agreement. In exchange for a generous settlement, and the right to retain
her apartments at Kensington Palace and her title of princess, Diana agreed
to relinquish the title of "her Royal Highness" and any future claims to
the British throne. In the year between the divorce and her fatal car accident,
the popular princess had promoted charitable causes, such as the prohibition
of land mines. Diana, Princess of Wales,
dies in Paris' Pitié-Salpetrière Hospital after suffering
massive chest injuries in an early morning car accident. Her companion,
Dodi Fayed, was killed instantly in the 00:25 crash, as was driver Henri
Paul, who was drunk and lost control of the Mercedes in a highway underpass.
He was driving at excessive speeds in a reckless attempt to escape paparazzi
photographers. Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees Jones, escaped with serious
but nonfatal injuries. He was the only one wearing his seat belt. The death
of Diana, beloved by millions for her beauty and good nature, plunged the
world into mourning. On 01 July 1961,
Diana Frances Spencer was born at Park House, the home that her parents
rented on Queen Elizabeth II's estate at Sandringham, England. In her childhood,
her playmates were Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, the younger sons of
Queen Elizabeth. When her father Edward John Spencer [24 Jan 1924 –
29 Mar 1992] inherited the title Earl of Spencer in 1975, she became known
as Lady Diana Spencer. After completing her education, Lady Diana became
a kindergarten teacher at a fashionable school in a suburb of London.
In 1980, she began a romance with Prince
Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth. On 24 February 1981, the 33-year-old
Prince of Wales announced his engagement to the 19-year-old schoolteacher.
On 29 July 1981, nearly one billion television viewers in 74 countries tuned
in to witness her marriage to the heir to the British throne at St. Paul's
Cathedral. Their first child, Prince William, was born in 1982, and their
second, Prince Henry, in 1984. Before
long, however, the tale couple grew apart. The paparazzi  freelance
photographers  made Diana one of the most photographed women in the
world, and privately she suffered from eating disorders and depression.
In 1992, Diana and Charles formally separated. On 28 August 1996, the prince
and princess reached a final divorce agreement after prolonged negotiations.
In exchange for a generous settlement and the right to retain her apartments
at Kensington Palace and her title Princess of Wales, Diana agreed to relinquish
the title Her Royal Highness and any future claims to the British throne.
In the year after her divorce, the
popular princess maintained a high public profile and continued to promote
many humanitarian causes, including support for AIDS victims and a campaign
against land mines. In late 1996, she became involved with millionaire Dodi
Al Fayed [15 Apr 1955–], the son of Mohamed
Al-Fayed [27 Jan 1929~] the Egyptian-born owner of the Harrods department
stores. Their romance grew in 1997, and in August Diana took a holiday with
Dodi in the Mediterranean. As always, the paparazzi followed closely behind,
and one photographer was paid £3 million by the tabloids for a photo of
Diana and Dodi kissing on Fayed's yacht.
On 30 August, Diana and Dodi flew from Sardinia to Paris. Diana planned
to return to Kensington Palace the next morning after spending a night in
Dodi's Paris villa. That evening, Diana and Dodi dined at a restaurant in
Paris' Ritz Hotel, owned by Dodi's father since 1979. The paparazzi came
out in force. Toward the end of the meal, Dodi told his chauffeur to drive
his car back to his mansion in an attempt to draw off photographers. Henri
Paul [03 Jul 1956–], the deputy chief of security at the Ritz, was
enlisted to be the new driver. He agreed, even though he had been drinking
heavily and was taking anti-depressant drugs that were not supposed to be
mixed with alcohol. At about midnight,
Dodi and Diana emerged from the rear entrance of the Ritz. The paparazzi
had not been fooled by the earlier ruse, and the couple were photographed
getting into a bullet-proof Mercedes along with Diana's bodyguard. As they
made their way across town, they were followed closely by paparazzi on motorcycles.
On the Place de la Concorde, Henri Paul hit the accelerator in an attempt
to escape the press. By the time they reached the underpass below the Pont
de l'Alma, the driver was traveling an estimated 200 km/h in a 50-km/h speed
zone. Paul lost control as they flew into the underpass, and the Mercedes
ricocheted off a wall and slammed into pillars supporting the tunnel roof.
The paparazzi, 100 meters behind at the time of the accident, were able
to stop in time. Several of them then ran down the tunnel and began taking
photos, which were later confiscated by police.
The Mercedes, lying crushed against the 13th pillar, was a tangle of smoking
metal. Diana, barely alive with serious chest injuries, was trapped inside.
Emergency crews arrived within minutes, but because the car was made of
reinforced steel meant to withstand bullets it took nearly an hour and a
half to extricate her from the crumbled vehicle. She was taken to the Pitié-Salpetrière
Hospital, where she suffered cardiac arrest minutes after her arrival. Surgeons
failed to revive her, and at 03:00 she was pronounced dead.
Al-Fayed's bodyguard is the only survivor of the crash. He suffered a concussion
and other injuries and has no memory of the crash nor the events immediately
preceding or following it. French authorities arrested 10 paparazzi photographers
who were tailing the Mercedes and charged them with involuntary manslaughter.
The charges were dropped when a formal investigation concluded that Henri
Paul was solely at fault for the fatal accident.
The tragic death of Diana caused an outpouring of British national feeling
not seen since the celebrations surrounding the end of World War II. More
than 3500 phone lines were set up to take donations for a memorial fund,
and within a year the charity fund raised $133 million, of which $48 million
came from sales of Elton John's memorial recording "Candle in the Wind 1997"
and $20 million from official Diana souvenirs. After being criticized for
failing to satisfactorily match the grief of the British people, the royal
family arranged for a state funeral to be held for Diana at Westminster
Abbey on 06 September. Diana's sons, William
[21 Jun 1982~] and Harry
[15 Sep 1984~], joined their father, Prince Charles; grandfather Prince
Philip [10 Jun 1921~]; and uncle Charles, the Earl of Spencer, to walk
the final stretch of the procession with the casket.

1996Dennis Timothy
Phillips [19 Sep 1969–], his wife, Angela Blackwood “Angie”
Phillips [24 Nov 1973–], their children, Courtney
Beulana Phillips [09 Aug 1992–], Meleana
Jade Phillips [25 Sep 1994–], and Kinsleigh
Skylar Phillips [18 Apr 1996–];
Carl Sydney “Sid” White III, 29, and Austin Dakota
“Cody” Roodvoets, 3, drowned at about 21:00 (01:00
UT 01 Sep). With two girls and their mother Sonja Phillips (mate of White,
not related to the other Phillips, babysitter of Roodvoets), in a van dirven
by Tim, they had arrived at the John D. Long Lake, near Union, South Carolina,
to visit the memorial to Michael Smith [10 Oct 1991–] and Alex Smith
[05 Aug 1993–] drowned
there on 25 October 1994 by their mother Susan Smith [26 Sep 1971~]
who made her car roll into the lake with the two boys strapped in the back
seat. This day the lights of the van light up the memorial and Angie, Carl,
and Sonja and her daughters get out to get a closer look. The van (in Park,
but with an improperly installed transmission) suddenly rolls down the ramp
and a steep grassy embankment into the lake. Angie and Carl jump into the
water to try to save those inside, but drown. —(090308)1986:: 82 persons as an Aeromexico jetliner
and a small private plane collide over Cerritos, Calif.1986
Henry Moore, escultor británico.1986 Urho Kaleva Kekkonen,
born on 03 September 1900, Finnish prime minister (1950–1953, 1954–1956)
and president (1956–1981), noted for his pragmatic Soviet-oriented neutrality.
1979 Celso Emilio Ferreiro, Spanish writer.1975 Remez,
mathematician 1963 George F. Braque, in Paris,
French Cubist
and Fauvist
painter, sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, born on 13 May 1882. 
MORE
ON BRAQUE AT ART 4 2~DAY
with links to images.1955 Willi Baumeister, German
abstract artist born on 22 January 1889.  MORE
ON BAUMEISTER AT ART 4 2~DAY
with links to images.1954 Nearly 70 persons, by hurricane
Carol in northeastern US.1951 The first of the North Koreans
and US Marines to die as the 1st Marine Division begins its attack
on Bloody Ridge in Korea. The four-day battle results in 2700 Marine casualties.1945 Stefan
Banach founded modern functional analysis and made major contributions
to the theory of topological vector spaces. In addition, he contributed
to measure theory, integration, and orthogonal series.1931
(Thomas Henry) Hall Caine, author of The
Scapegoat1919: 35 members of a Jewish defense group,
killed by Petlyura's Ukranian Army.

During World War I, he becomes the
first ace to be killed in aerial combat, shot down by a German two-seater
piloted by his former student, Unteroffizier Kandulski, who two days later
flew over the French lines and dropped a wreath with these words: "Dem im
Kampfe fur sein Vaterland gefallenen Flieger Pègoud ehrt der Gegner"
.

Pègoud was born on
15 June 1889. He got his pilot's licence (no. 1243) on 1 March 1913, at
the Blériot Company.

On
20 August 1913, he had been the first person to parachute from an airplane,
from 200 m above Buc, France (the plane, which he had been piloting, crashed).
Less than a month later, became the first pilot to perform a loop (this
is also claimed for Gustave Hamel, and for a Russian, Piotr Nesterov). Also
in 1913, Pègoud became the first
pilot to fly an aircraft in sustained inverted flight.

^1888 Mary Ann Nicholls,
murdered by Jack the Ripper. Mary
Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial killer "Jack the Ripper,"
is found murdered and mutilated in Whitechapel's Buck's Row. The East
End of London saw four more victims of the murderer during the next
few months, but no suspect was ever found.
In Victorian England, London's East End was a teeming slum occupied
by nearly a million of the city's poorest citizens. Many women were
forced to resort to prostitution, and in 1888 there were estimated
to be more than 1'000 prostitutes in Whitechapel. That summer, a serial
killer began targeting these downtrodden women. On September 8, the
killer claimed his second victim, Annie Chapman, and on September
30 two more prostitutes  Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes 
were murdered and carved up on the same night. By then, London's police
had determined the pattern of the killings. The murderer, offering
to pay for sex, would lure his victims onto a secluded street or square
and then slice their throats. As the women rapidly bled to death,
he would then brutally mutilate them with the same six-inch knife.
The police, which lacked modern forensic
techniques such as fingerprinting and blood typing, were at a complete
loss for suspects. Dozens of letters allegedly written by the murderer
were sent to the police, and the vast majority of these were immediately
deemed fraudulent. However, two letters  written by the same
individual  alluded to crime facts known only to the police
and the killer. These letters, signed "Jack the Ripper," gave rise
to the serial killer's popular nickname.
On 07 November, after a month of silence, Jack took his fifth and
last victim, Irish-born Mary Kelly, an occasional prostitute. Of all
his victims' corpses, Kelly's was the most hideously mutilated. In
1892, with no leads found (except, it is alleged by some, suspicions
that Jack was a royal) and no more murders recorded, the Jack the
Ripper file was closed.

^1864 Nearly 2000
Rebs, 178 Yanks, as Battle of Jonesboro begins.
General William T. Sherman launches
the attack that finally secures Atlanta, Georgia, for the Union, and
seals the fate of Confederate General John Bell Hood's army, which
is forced to evacuate the area. The Battle of Jonesboro was the culmination
of a four-month campaign by Sherman to capture Atlanta. He had spent
the summer driving his army down the 160-km corridor from Chattanooga,
Tennessee, against a Confederate force led by General Joseph Johnston.
General Hood, who replaced Johnston in July on the outskirts of Atlanta,
proceeded to attack Sherman in an attempt to drive him northward.
However, these attacks failed, and by 01 August 1 the armies had settled
into a siege. In late August,
Sherman swung his army south of Atlanta to cut the main rail line
supplying the Rebel army. Confederate General William Hardee's corps
moved to block Sherman at Jonesboro, and attacked the Union troops
on 31 August but the Rebels were thrown back with staggering losses.
The entrenched Yankees lost just 178 men, while the Confederates lost
nearly 2000. On September 1,
Sherman attacked Hardee. Though the Confederates held, Sherman successfully
cut the rail line and effectively trapped the Rebels. Hardee had to
abandon his position, and Hood had no choice but to withdraw from
Atlanta. The fall of Atlanta was instrumental in securing the reelection
of Abraham Lincoln in the fall.

1816 José Joaquín Camacho Lago, político y periodista colombiano.

1811Louis-Antoine
de Bougainville, French mathematician navigator who led the
French naval expedition that first circled the globe, about which he wrote
in Voyage Autour du Monde (1771). Born on 11 November 1729, he
entered the army at age 24, he went to Canada in 1756 as aide-de-camp to
general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and fought against the British during the
French and Indian War. In 1763 he switched to the navy and in 1764 established
in the Falkland Islands a colony, which was ceded to Spain in 1767. He set
out on his voyage around the world in December 1766, stopped at Buru in
the Moluccas in September 1768, and without a shipwreck disembarked at Saint-Malo
(comme le M. Dumollet de la
chanson) in March 1769, though he had lost 7 men. Bougainville served
a chef d'escadre with the French fleet supporting the US War of Independence
(1779-1782). After a French defeat off Martinique (12 April 1782) he was
court-martialed. Napoléon made him a senator, count, and gave him
the Légion d'Honneur. Named for Bougainville are the largest of the
Solomon Islands, a strait in the New Hebrides, and a plant genus of some
14 species of shrubs, vines, and small trees in the four-o'clock family
(Nyctaginaceae) native to South America.  Portrait
of Bougainville (1790, 88x71cm) by Joseph
Ducreux. [>>>]

^1777 Fifteen US
soldiers, one Amerindian attacker, at Fort Henry.
Samuel Mason, a captain in command
of Fort Henry on the Ohio frontier, survives a devastating Indian
attack only to become one of the young nation's first western desperados.
The son of a distinguished Virginia family, Samuel Mason became a
militia officer and was assigned to the western frontier post of Fort
Henry in present-day West Virginia. In the summer of 1777, with the
colonies fighting a war for independence, Mason feared attacks by
the Indian allies of the British.
On this day a band of Amerindians from several eastern tribes did
attack the fort. The Indians initially fired only on several men who
were outside the fort rounding up horses. Hearing the shots, Mason
gathered 14 men and rode to their rescue. This was exactly what the
warriors hoped he would do. They lay in wait and ambushed the party,
killing all but Mason. Badly wounded, Mason escaped death by hiding
behind a log. A second party that attempted to come to his rescue
suffered the same fate as the first. All told, Mason lost 15 men compared
to only one fatality among the attackers.
Mason recovered from his wounds and continued to command Fort Henry
for several years. Following the end of the war, though, he seems
to have fallen on hard times. Repeatedly accused of being a thief,
he moved farther west into the lawless frontier of the young US. By
1797, he had become a pirate on the Mississippi River, preying on
boatmen who moved valuable goods up and down the river. He also reportedly
took to robbing travelers along the Natchez Trace (or trail) in Tennessee,
often with the assistance of his four sons and several other vicious
men. By the early 1800s, Mason had become one of the most notorious
desperados on the US frontier, a precursor to Jesse James, Cole Younger,
and later outlaws of the Wild West. In January 1803, Spanish authorities
arrested Mason and his four sons and decided to turn them over to
the US. En route to Natchez, Tennessee, Mason and his sons killed
the commander of the boat and escaped. Determined to apprehend Mason,
the US upped the reward for his capture, dead or alive. The reward
money soon proved too tempting for two members of Mason's gang. In
July 1803 they killed Mason, cut off his head, and brought it into
the Mississippi territorial offices to prove that they had earned
the reward. The men were soon identified as members of Mason's gang,
however, and they were arrested and hanged.

1688 John Bunyan,
69, English Puritan clergyman and writer. Imprisoned several times
between 1660 and 1672, Bunyan used these periods of isolation to write
his two literary masterpieces, Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and The
Pilgrim's Progress (1678). His death was caused by a cold
caught riding through the rain to reconcile a father and son.
BUNYAN ONLINE:

1181 Pope Alexander III, who is considered one of the greatest
popes, who excommunicated Emperor Frederick I. Frederick finally capitulated.
He had set up an anti-pope. Under Alexander a council confirmed the exclusive
right of papal elections to the college of cardinals.1057
Leofric husband of Lady Godiva

1980
Poland's Solidarity labor movement, as an agreement signed in Gdansk
ends a 17-day-old strike.1976 The First Index Investment
Trust is started, the first index mutual fund fund for individual
investors, with the $11.4 million it raised during its initial underwriting.
It seeks investment results that parallel the performance of the Standard
& Poor's 500 Index. [5~year comparison chart >] The Fund
would be renamed Vanguard
500 Index Fund (symbol VFINX) in 1998 and become the world's largest
mutual fund in March 2000. On its 25th anniversary it would have assets
of $90.6 billion. Someone who invests $10'000 in the Trust on this day,
and reinvests all dividends and capital gains thereafter, has $261'419 on
30 June 2001, for an average annual return of 14.05%. However someone who
would have invested $10'000 on 01 September 2000, would have been left on
04 April 2001 with only $7241.50 (not counting possible dividends), for
an annualized loss of 42%.

^1908 William Saroyan, in Fresno, Calif.,
the son of an Armenian immigrant, US writer who made his initial impact
during the Depression with a deluge of brash, original, and irreverent stories
celebrating the joy of living in spite of poverty, hunger, and insecurity.
Saroyan's father died when the
boy was three, and he was raised in an orphanage. His mother later reunited
the family. To earn extra money for the family, Saroyan started selling
newspapers on the streets of Fresno, California, at age eight. Although
he left school at 15, he became an avid reader and haunted the public libraries.
Saroyan published his first collection of stories, The Daring Young
Man on the Flying Trapeze, in 1934, followed by Inhale and Exhale
in 1936. His first play, My Heart's in the Highlands, was produced
in 1939. His play The Time of Your Life, about a group of lonely
drifters in a San Francisco bar, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.
Saroyan rejected the award, saying the play was no better than anything
else he had written. In his novels,
Saroyan portrayed a fundamental goodness in all of his characters. His work
was frequently based on his own childhood, and boys are often his main characters.
The central figure in the stories of My Name Is Aram is a young
Armenian-American boy, and his 1943 novel, The Human Comedy, featured
a 14-year-old boy whose older brother has left to fight in World War II.
Others of his novels are: Rock Wagram (1951), The Laughing
Matter (1953). Saroyan also wrote
several collections of brief essays: Here Comes, There Goes You Know
Who (1961), Not Dying (1963), Days of Life and Death and
Escape to the Moon (1971), and Places Where I've Done Time
(1975) Saroyan married Carol Marcus,
and the couple had two children, a son and a daughter. The couple divorced,
remarried, then divorced again. Saroyan fell into deep debt in the 1960s
and was plagued by tax problems. He wrote as much as possible to regain
his financial footing, and much of his later work received mixed reviews.
He died in Fresno on 18 May 1981.

^1897 The
Kinetograph is patented by Edison
Thomas Edison receives US patent #589168 for his Kinetographic
Camera, for which he had applied on 24 August 1891. William
K. L. Dickson and Edison had developed the camera and its viewer in
the early 1890s and staged several demonstrations. The camera was
based on photographic principles discovered by still-photograph pioneers
Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and Louis Daguerre of France. In 1877,
inventor Edward Muybridge developed a primitive form of motion pictures
when Leland Stanford, governor of California, invited him to develop
photo studies of animals in motion. Muybridge developed an ingenious
system for photographing sequential motion, setting up 24 cameras
attached to trip wires stretched across a racetrack. As the horse
tripped each wire, the shutters snapped. The resulting series of photos
could be projected as something resembling a motion picture. This
breakthrough in the early 1870s inspired another student of animal
motion, Etienne Jules Marey of France, to develop in 1882 a rotating
camera rather like a rifle, where different pictures were taken in
a rapid sequence by a rotating cartridge.
Unlike these earlier cameras, Edison's Kinetoscope and Kinetograph
used celluloid film, invented by George Eastman in 1889. In February
1893, Edison built a small movie studio that could be rotated to capture
the best available sunlight. He showed the first demonstration of
his films-featuring three of his workers pretending to be blacksmiths-in
May 1893. The invention inspired
French inventors Louis and August Lumière to develop a movie
camera and projector, the Cinématographe, that allowed a large
audience to view a film. Several other cameras and projectors were
also developed in the late 1800s.
In 1898, Edison sued American Mutoscope and Biograph Pictures, claiming
that the studio had infringed on his patent for the Kinetograph. He
had entrusted the development of the machine to his assistant, W.L.K.
Dickson, who left Edison's company in 1895 and helped found Biograph.
However, in 1902, the US Court of Appeals ruled that although Thomas
Edison had patented the Kinetograph, he only owned rights to the sprocket
system that moved perforated film through the camera, not the entire
concept of the movie camera.
In 1909, Edison and Biograph joined forces with other filmmakers to
create the Motion Pictures Patents Company, an organization devoted
to protecting patents and keeping other players from entering the
film industry. In 1917, the Supreme Court dissolved the trust, and
the Edison Company left the film industry the same year.The
Kinetoscope is patented by EdisonThomas
Edison's inventions (and those of others which he attributed to
himself) helped advance a number of different technologies, including
motion pictures. His kinetoscope was the forerunner of the motion-picture
film projector. The device, also known as the peephole viewer, ran
film in a continuous movement between a magnifying lens and light
source. Since images were viewed through the kinetoscope, Edison did
not address the problem of showing them on a screen.

1885 DuBose Heyward , US
novelist, dramatist, and poet whose first novel, set in Catfish Row,
a Charleston tenement street, Porgy (1925), was the basis
for a highly successful play, an opera (Porgy
and Besswith music by George
Gershwin), and a motion picture. Heyward first wrote poems: Carolina
Chansons (1922, with Hervey Allen); Skylines and Horizons
(1924); and Jasbo Brown and Selected Poems (1931). His other
novels include Angel (1926), Peter Ashley (1932),
and Star-Spangled Virgin (1939). He died on 16 June 1940.

1885 Herbert
Turnbull, he would be Regius Professor of Mathematics at St
Andrews from 1921 to 1950. He worked in algebra, particularly invariant
theory and was also interested in the history of mathematics
1880 Queen Mother Wilhelmina Netherlands (1890-1948)1880
Tietze,
mathematician 1878 Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel,
he would grow up to be a Russian general and leader of counter-revolutionary
forces in Russia 1917-20. 1870 Maria Montessori,
Italian educator. She developed a theory of teaching which emphasized a
reinforcement of initiative, and a freedom of movement for the child. She
co-authored The
Montessori Method1852 Gaetano Previati,
Italian artist who died on 21 June 1920.1844 Mary Gray Phelps,
would grow up to be Mrs. Ward, under the pseudonym Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
wrote Poetic
Studies (PHELPS ONLINE: )

^1827 Anna Bartlett Warner, US author
and hymnwriter. She never married, but lived with her sister Susan
(1819-1885, also an author) in New York state. Anna
had invented an educational game called Robinson Crusoe's Farmyard,
played with coloured cards. In 1852, she published Dollars and
Cents. Anna's works include My Brother's Keeper (1855),
The Star out of Jacob (1868), Gardening by Myself
(1872), the first US book to urge women to do their own gardening,
Cross Corners (1887), and Susan Warner (1909). She
died on 22 January 1915.
ANNA WARNER ONLINE: Hymns
of the Church Militant (1858)

Thoughts for the day:There's so much to say, but your eyes keep interrupting
me.
There's so much to say, but your Is keep interrupting me.
There's so much to say, but your nays keep interrupting me.
There's so much to say, but your neighs keep interrupting me.
There's so much to say, but your rise keeps interrupting me.
There's so much to say, but your ice keeps interrupting me.
There's so much to say, but your rice keeps interrupting me.